this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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I am asking because I know people from both sides:

  • People who discourage it: usually talk about how the beggars might spend their money on, how they might be lying, How donating to them will encourage them to keep begging and how they should be looking for a job instead (My commentary: finding a job is impossible for them this days, matter of fact there is literally hundreds, if not thousands of articles online talking about how hard and impossible it had become).
  • People who encourage it: to be honest here, they usually talk only about religious reasons.

(Note: I know that the overview about both sides are highly unbalanced, but I preferred to keep it limited to my personal experiences rather than expanding it from myself, as I intentionally not looking for theories and objective logic, rather I am looking at people reasons and opinions as this is highly subjective matter.)

Anyone got any thoughts about this?

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[–] Allonzee@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Policy wise, this has always been my hill to die on. Giving the homeless money directly is my exclusive form of charity. Because I don't want some capitalist on some bragging rights philanthropy board getting part of my donation as part of their six figure board salary. They've done enough.

A large homeless population is a symbol of a failed society's crimes against itself.

If a society doesn't exist to take care of its people from the worst off upward at all times, it is without a benevolent point and it's existence is without worth.

The homeless in the US are the US's greatest domestic victims, left to die horribly of exposure and ~~police~~ capital defense force brutality for the crime of failing to become model exploitation vessels for our robber Barron's insatiable greed disease.

Most of them should have conditionless basic housing, the worst off should be inpatient mental health wards of our society, as they are us whether we hate them or not. But we aren't willing to pay for that. Even though mass homelessness is not inevitable with good policy and funding.

Worse still, many non wealthy Americans hate them for lowering their... 🤮... Property values. This all goes back go us being a society in name only. We're more a bunch of exploited, deluded peasants at each other's throats for robber Baron scraps as they use their media and their captured government for blaming their greatest victims, those people under your local freeways and tent cities, for their avarice fueled malice.

Communism may starve human nature, but capitalism indulges and gluts humanity's worst, most vile impulses exclusively. It breeds sociopathy as a desirable choice.

And considering the depths our homeless have been brought to by the society that betrayed them, I genuinely do not care if they spend it on food or shelter or alcohol or drugs or whatever will give them even a moment of solace/escape/peace from what we have done to them.